Social sharing has changed drastically over the past year. We, as consumers, no longer exercise a one dimensional approach to social content sharing. Recent research from the global social media impact study (GSMIS) provides a fascinating insight into shifts in social media, but while the focus has so far been on the apparent decline of Facebook, the real story is the diversity in how services are used.

Back in the days when I was experimenting with ways to reach my customers online, I implemented live chat functionality on my website (back then there was only one). I admit, I was really quite excited by the idea of talking to my prospective customers live.But eager is as eager does and my buoyant greetings were on many occasions knocked back.

If you look closely on some news channels, like Sky News and Channel 4 News, you'll see the public are starting to contribute using their G+ profiles to join the news team's Hangout. They film themselves on their webcams and talk into the microphones on their laptops, whilst being streamed into a live TV programme.

Commercials are awful for the most part (except the one I was in which was extraordinarily good) and in an attempt to move away from predictable narrative set-ups and engage with a more media-savvy audience, advertisers are adopting far more adventurous ways of selling us biscuits and bank loans.

Got a birthday to announce? A party you want to make sure your friends attend? When posting a status, users can now follow this up by clicking a 'promote' button and paying a small fee to ensure that their chosen story appears at the top of their friends' news feeds.

The problem with Google's latest attempt to break the stranglehold on the social media space held by Facebook is the same as every previous effort (anybody remember Buzz?) - they're too late to the party and often seem to have rushed through a product to get it to market too quickly.

Followers of this blog (previously in the Guardian Work section - read the archive here) will know that I've recently joined an exciting new business breakfast group that combines face-to-face networking with instruction in how best to use social media to grow your business. Yes HashtagConnect is taking the St. Albans start-up community by storm and, naturally, I popped along to the Red Lion Inn for its second breakfast meeting last week.

He works for IBM Madrid, lives in Gran Canaria and his boss is based in the United States. So why on Earth did Luis Suarez decide to give up email? The social software evangelist tells Kate Bassettabout his take on life outside the inbox.

Referral marketing is nothing new. Businesses have always recognised the power of referrals made by their customers. Something along the lines of "refer a friend and save 20% off your next bill" can be very effective for businesses.

For those that work in social media and keep a close eye on brand activity in social media, and in particular Facebook, there has long been a challenge to understand, interpret and report accurately on the figures and results.

Many people still think of search engine optimisation (SEO) as separate from any social media activity they undertake. However, this is simply no longer the case. Social media is fast becoming the major way that people are sharing and, therefore, discovering new information online.